Word: tenoritis
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...newish Angel stereo recording conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent (Angel 3598 C). It's not up to the old mono recording--the Huddersfield Choral Society are worse than usual--but it's not unacceptable. The soloists' names are relatively unfamiliar in this country (with the possible exception of the tenor, Richard Lewis), but Sir Malcolm, unlike Sir Adrian, has used them to good advantage, restrained his extravagances, and produced a restrained, lyrical, and generally balanced Messiah...
Angel now also offers one of the best recordings of J.S. Bach's Magnificat in D (Angel 45027). Here, again is tenor Richard Lewis, and his Deposuit potentes de sede is one of the clearest and most satisfying interpretations of that aria: Geraint Jones conducts his own capable orchestra. On the same record is a performance of Henry Purcell's magnificent and rarely heard Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (quite unseasonal, to be sure, but it is probably this fact of its co-billing that leads us to prefer Jones's recording). Her Malesty died from the smallpox...
...week's two most important debuts ∙Tenor Jess Thomas, 35, sang Walther in the Met's production of Die Meistersinger, and should have won a pocketful of raves. In the demanding role, his voice soared in steady flight above the stentorian heaviness of the Wagnerian orchestra: after the ardors of two long acts, he still had a great reservoir of lyric beauty left for the Prize Song that finishes the performance-and finishes the pretensions of a good many tyro tenors with it. A big (6 ft. 3 in.) and muscular South Dakotan, Thomas may well...
Almost Hypnotic. To symbolize the work's spirit of reconciliation, Britten had originally selected an Englishman and a German for the two male leads-English Tenor Peter Pears and German Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. But Fischer-Dieskau, who was so moved during the Coventry performance that he was barely able to sing some of his lines, had an attack of bronchitis and was forced to cancel in Germany. His part was taken by Austrian Baritone Walter Berry. The audience seemed almost hypnotized from the work's opening lines to Owen's closing "Let us sleep...
Britten's "protest against the destruction of life" moved on contrasting levels, with the mourning liturgical passages accompanied by full chorus and orchestra, and the Owen poetry (sung by tenor and baritone) accompanied by only a small chamber group. The general effect, as one critic noted, was "as though sections of [Mahler's] Das Lied von der Erde had been interpolated into the Verdi Requiem." The bells tolling for the dead in one segment of the Mass were echoed by Owen's line, "What passing-bells for these who die like cattle," while the distant menace...